Dr Daniel Abiteboul from the United Nations arrived in Kabul yesterday. He will be spending the next month assessing the country’s most pressing needs on behalf of the organisation…
Without registering the name of the sender, she had flicked the email from the United Nations representative on to her receptionist, Iman, and it was she who had replied on Sofia’s behalf. But then she had seen his photo in the paper last night and pulled the email up again, reading it carefully for any hint of recognition, but there had been none.
Staring down now at Daniel’s photo, a long-forgotten memory began to form: hands strong enough to pull a broken bone back into place but delicate enough to sew tiny stitches into the face of a baby, and sensitive enough to set her skin on fire. She leaned back in her chair, following the memory. The first night he had come to her he had arrived in silence, placing his finger to her lips, waiting until she understood. Only then, when he was absolutely certain she wanted him as much as he wanted her, did he lean in and kiss her. Every night after that, when the village had settled down for the night, Daniel would leave his bed in the mosque and return to her. And every morning, before the village began to stir, he would go. As they worked together during the day, not a word was spoken of what had passed between them in the dark, but there had been times when she would look up from her work to find him watching her, as if she was a puzzle he could not solve. And then he had disappeared, and his leaving, like his lovemaking, had been a surprise.
It had been such a strange, haunting affair. Without the distraction of life outside the village, time and movement had slowed to a gentler pace until each moment was intensified. When Sofia worked with the village women, or she gazed up at the mountains, or made love with Daniel, there was nothing in the world but that single, complete moment.
Flipping the newspaper shut, she found herself looking at a photo of the aftermath of a suicide bombing outside Kabul’s main police headquarters from the day before. She had not heard that particular explosion, but she had heard enough.
The first bomb had been a couple of weeks after she had arrived in Kabul, and so close to the square that the sound of the explosion saw her hitting the floor in terror. Trembling like a terrified animal, she had waited until the gunfire ceased to be replaced by the sound of ambulances. Crawling over to the window, she had pulled herself up and looked out. A thick black plume of smoke was rising in the air about four blocks away. In the square below a few people had been standing in groups talking, but most were going about their business as if nothing had happened.
Over time, Sofia had come to react to explosions just like every other resident of Kabul. The initial, unconscious response was an overwhelming sense of relief that the bomb hadn’t gone off under her, after which she tried to work out where it was and whether any friends might be in the vicinity. She would then try to call them, which was always problematic considering everyone else was doing the same thing and the signals were often jammed. Eventually, she would go back to whatever she had been doing beforehand, hoping no bad news would find its way to her door.
It was unsettling just how quickly she had adjusted to living with the constant threat of violence until the next explosion arrived, and her heart somersaulted in her chest and the adrenaline smashed through her veins and she was aware once again of the underlying tension that permanently fizzed through her body.
Like all the residents of Shaahir Square, Sofia had come to see the safety of the square and the danger of Kabul as two completely different, albeit interconnected, worlds. It was, she knew, a particularly dangerous illusion.
2
IN THE COURTYARD below Sofia’s window and out in the square beyond the gate, the day was beginning to unfold. Ahmad, the owner of the tiny hole-in-the-wall shop that sold all manner of household goods, was entering the darkness of the square. Ahmad didn’t go to mosque in the morning. From the gossip that passed Sofia’s way she suspected it was because the blind cleric, Imam Mustafa, was especially fond of the time after morning prayers to let his thoughts wander off to distant and random horizons, keeping the worshippers – according to some – on the cold mats far longer than was strictly necessary. Ahmad, with his serious, frowning eyebrows and his thick black moustache, was a man in a hurry. And yet, thought Sofia, as she watched him heave up the heavy metal shutter on the front of his shop, time was one of the few things her friend had an abundance of.
In the shadow of the shop awning Ahmad lit a cigarette, and as he drew the nicotine deep into his lungs the glow illuminated the craggy corners of his young-old face until he coughed, pulling raw pieces of tobacco out of his mouth with tar-stained fingers. Sofia thought him too young to have such fingers, but Ahmad had been a village boy addicted to nicotine from the age of eight. As he smoked he straightened out his moustache with his thumb and forefinger, contemplating what the day might bring: enough money to put food on his family’s table and perhaps a little left over? Insha’Allah.
As the sun began to lighten the sky and the darkness of the square turned a cold unwelcoming grey, she could see Ahmad more clearly in his white perahan tunban and raggedy
